He paused in grabbing his boxers to look at the demon. It was unsettling how quickly Lawr could move from the semblance of humanity to that of his own nature. Centuries of practice or had his time believing he was a human actually make him adopt something of their mannerisms? Or maybe all those eyes helped him research. He wouldn't know. He wasn't a duke. He wasn't even up at the highest tiers of Heaven, though he was higher ranking. But the sheer power of a Duke was on another level. He sometimes wondered what that much power could achieve. How much work could get one when you could easily use your power to make near impossible things happen.

Curiousity.

"I tend to not spend too much time outside of work. If I have time, then I take it to recharge and rest.......as I was doing." He said looking up at Lawr who had interrupted the few times he slept.

"Idle hands are a devil's playground. Idleness makes me uncomfortable." It made him worry. It made him sad.

"It's none too enjoyable to do things alone anyways."

He thought of what things he id do that could be a hobby.

"I do like watching people at cafes. That's nice." Maybe a bit creepy but most people getting coffee were in need of recharging to do work. Students studying. Employees. Those off to handle family affairs.

Lawrd grin turned a little wolfish at the slightly backhanded implication of Melvin's comment about the fact he was interrupted. "I would say I was sorry if I butted in on you but I'm not very sorry. It's surprisingly rare to catch an angel in the altogether, some of your kind are practically never-nudes." He was surprised to find he was having fun in spite of himself just being a pest at Melvin. He'd forgotten how fun it could be simply to be a spanner in the works of someone else.

"And oh I wouldn't say its always the devil's playground, for me it was idleness that made me want to try humanity over simply being a demon."

The comment about doing things alone though did strike a nerve with him. "Yes. Admittedly it was an end to solitude that gave me my purpose back, even if my humanity was a farce, a lie. I felt like I belonged, and that was and is more than I can say for any point in my life previous to that."

"Watching people though! That is the most fun thing that there is! The things you see, the things you can observe when no one else is around, all the secret little sins in the world, all the darkest blackest thoughts laid bare in privacy. A cafe is a start but there is so much more out there, so much more." And again that brilliant, fixated madness. Even his moths moved differently when he seemed to look into someplace else. "How about we go do something fun?" he said. "Anything you like, anywhere you like. I can take you."

"It is rare. I barely sleep. I just...have been a bit exhausted lately. It doesn't happen that often."

"I watch to see their choices. To see what they enjoy. What they feel is worth being driven towards. Their motivations and their goals and the hard work they put to the point of physical and mental pain in the pursuit of happiness and values they hold dear." It was a 180 to what Lawr sought out and enjoyed in is people watching, and he wondered what places he went to when he did his own people watching. Would it not be more bias to see the darker sides of people in places that catered to the darker temptations? In a everyday setting, wouldn't that be less? Less enjoyable for the Duke.

Lawrence grinned. "That's typical. Offer people anywhere in the universe and they have no idea what they want to see. I bet there are a lot of places you've never been. It's not an offer everyone gets twice."

He didn't seem offended though.

"If you let me choose I'll just take you somewhere I enjoy, I can't guarantee that it will be the sort of place you'd like."

But he looked excited anyway, his moths eagerly flitting around them, dancing in halos around their master's head.

He watched Lawr, blue eyes coasting over his form as moths collected in a sad mockery of a halo above his head as if to shadow a halo he once held back when they were all kin and angelic. He wondered deep down if there turned the restlessness of virtues stiffled by the need of Sin.

Half-dressed, he looked away as he turned slightly to out on briefs and pants. After ehich he dat on the bed, deep in thought as he put on socks.

"If a duke could take you anywear.." He openly mused.

"...as long as it doesn't make me a demon, then I would ve interested in what you find enjoyable given all your resources."

He stood up and placed on his glasses before finding his dress shoes. His hair was still a mess.

"Don't worry about that. SIN is something you choose. No one can make you a demon. No one can force you to consume it." and he gave him a wink. "So you are completely safe with me. For a given value of safe anyway."

Lawrence gestured to the door he'd just closed and in a creeping and almost liquid flow reflectiveness dripped across the wood, spreading out until the whole surface was a mirror showing the room and them in it, though there was something off about Lawrence's reflection, seeming to flicker and glitch bizarrely, the moths jerking and moving as if in stop motion.

"Either way we can go somewhere I enjoy. Best not to look like this though, they aren't a fan of humans there, or human illusions." He shrugged off his human appearance and took on that of his more animalistic shape instead, an elegant and one eyed fox. "If you didn't figure one out when they were in style" Because animalistic forms had been the norm long before humanoid ones had been useful. "Then I can give you one, but you were pretty cute a minute ago, I'd wager you have a little something." and he smirked, showing rows of sharp white teeth.

He donned his mask again, every one of the many many eyes fixed on Melvin.

"The thing with choice is that you can be lead to believe you want something. Isn't trickery a skill of demons?" He said, smiling as he put on his shoes and lacing them on. Finished, he went to the bathroom for a comb and returned to look as Lawr moved to change the door to a mirrored reflection. It was strange, and while he had seen plenty in his long range of time, he was still curious and inspected it while also using it to comb down his unruly hair.

"Hmm....." He thought, looking at the surface but not touching. Mirrors. "You like using mirrors a lot." He pointed out, glancing at the Duke. "Can you simply teleport?"

Glancing back, his frown intensified as he tried to work his hair down and gave up. It never behaved. Normally it would be able to swim freely in water, but in the world above water it puffed up and stuck out at odd angles. He often was told he should use product, but the smell of it put him off. Mass produced. Very little human touch. Quick to make. There was industry and importing involved, but it felt hollow.

At the instruction to change to his other form, he tensed a bit and looked back. "Really?" It didn't seem like Lawr was pulling on his chain just for the sake of seeing him shift again. However, changing like that felt - personal.

"It's been a very long time since days like that." Even still, he had been a angel always on duty. He only had gone out and socialized when he still worked with the small group he grew fond of through the decades. Those times had been long ago.

He had been fully serpentine as he rested, but where they were going was asking for a happy medium between upright human and creature. Considering this, he glanced at Lawr again and his own form and saw how little he cared about shifting. Probably still used it today if he was going to a favorite place that liked the practice.

"Very well..I suppose." He gestured for Lawr to wait just a moment and went to the bathroom to look into his own mirror. Something about Lawr's touched on something that was the Duke's and he didn't feel right using it to change. Even more, he didn't want an audience as he attempted a shift again.

It took a few moments before he stepped back out. His skin was now scaled, and the line of hair that was fluffed now ran down the back of his head into a line complete with various spikes that stopped at the base of his neck before it damaged his suit. Between the scales a bit of fur grew as well, and he had a muzzle and elongated ears. It was far from the leviathan that had been sleeping before as it was more toned down, but it was still clear he belonged in the ocean than the ground.

"This feels silly." He grumbled, as if they were dressing up for a Halloween Party in July. Lawr's previous comment on it being "cute" had not gone unnoticed, but it let it pass like many of those comments he heard about his appearance from anyone in the past. It wasn't important. He shouldn't' focus on those things. Let them drift off.

Lawrence smiled toothily and the effect was rendered more unnerving by the fact that with the mask on only his mouth was visible. "Well trickery is fair game. If someone's weak willed enough that they get tricked well, maybe whatever they get is what they deserve. Mostly you just can't force SIN down someone's throat." And he knew because in his time he'd actually tried.

"Mirrors have always been my thing." he said, extending a clawed hand to touch the reflective surface, it came off in his hand like mercury, dripping to the floor where it faded away. "Shows you things about people you never knew, shows them sides of themselves they might not want to accept. Mirrors are doorways, visions, anything you might want them to be." But it was difficult magic to master, something you could lose yourself in and never return. "Yes I can teleport though." Travel magic was one of the hardest to master too, most demons and angels capable of only small distances. "So we won't need to /walk/."

"As for shapes, sometimes it pays to be flexible. No point always being fixed. Times change, maybe one day they'll change back again."

He unashamedly looked the other Host over as he shifted and nodded approvingly.

"Trust me, its better to feel silly than to look like a humanoid where we are going." And he took hold of Melvin's shoulder with his paw and led him in the direction of the portal in the door which showed a strange starscape now rather than the room they were in. Magic thrummed on the air almost audibly as Lawrence drew up his powers.

Heading through it both of them found themselves in a very dark alleyway under a sky of perfect visible stars.

"Maybe on movie sets or Halloween but I don't think this is coming back. There are too many cameras and phones these days. It's too much papersork when anyone shifts shape in the human world." Of course his mind defaulted to Earth and not the trends or heaven or hell. He'd been away too long and too often to know what was IN right now. He'd been teased enough for having outdated clothing and slang which is why he now defaulted to suits. Those didn't seem to change much.

He felt unnerved. The strange mirror. Being in this form after so long. Having a Duke of Hell place a paw on his shoulder and lead him Him knows where. Why was he doing this again? He wasn't bored. No. He had plenty of work. He wasn't deviating. There was no desire for SIN and never would be. Doing this was even as risky as placing a seal on a duke.

And yet he slowly stepped in and felt awash in a strange sensation before stepping into an alleyway. Already he felt regret and nerves twist his stomach. "This ...is..?" He couldn't make the place out with what little there was to see.

Stepping out of the portal there was a lingering feeling of being off somehow that lingered. For a moment there had been a grim sensation that they’d been between worlds, somewhere in the cracks and that if Lawrence had let go that would have been where he stayed. In the blackness there had been the eyes and the hint of something massive.

Mercifully the sensation didn’t linger too long, the chill fading away, replaced only by the normal chill of a draughty alley.

It wasn’t Earth, that was for sure, the faded posters and torn stickers on the wall written in various languages, many of them never seen on Earth. One written in Enochian, the shared language of the Hosts themselves proclaimed that a band would be performing in a club several years ago.

The sky was the most jarringly strange thing, too clear, too lacking in a visible atmosphere to be Earth, and the longer you looked the more apparent it became that on one side of the sky was the whole universe only for it to sharply dwindle to almost total blackness.

“Earth is a very small place.” Lawrence said.

“This is Malarif.” He said, and it was a name whispered on rumour, on exaggeration and stories of terrible terrible things. “Welcome to the end of worlds.” And he smirked. “This is as close as you can safely come to the abyss, and I use safely in its loosest term.”

All Hosts were aware of the abyss just as all humans were aware of space, and yet for Hosts it was seen as just as unattainable. Te abyss was known as the nothing space that housed all that remained after the creation of the realms, a dimension where life and matter pooled in a contorted mass and where creatures grew unfathomably large and horrific. It was said that even a strong host could be devoured by them and almost everything known about the place was from word of mouth. Lingering too long too far from SIN or LIFE was said to drive Hosts mad.

And yet Malarif stood on the precipice because wherever there was danger there was thrill seekers.

Lawrence flicked his tail, his eyes turned to the end of the alleyway. “The only law here is that the strong rule. Stick close to me and you’ll be fine, take your chances out there and you might find out the market value of a soft pretty angelic mouth.

“Oh and most things here hate Earth, they see it as useful only for its resources, so don’t be too much of a human lover if you can possibly avoid it.”

He turned an ear to a rustle behind them where a bundle of discarded rags pulled itself up into the shape of a living creature rasping.

“Didyewssssay yew love humansss? Yew from earthh? Yew have magic?” Flesh poked from the rags like a rotten maw, flesh stretched weakly over bone, lit from within by a vibrant blue.

“No.” Said lawrence, and with a flippant wave of one hand cleaved the creature in two with a crack like fractured glass. It slumped to the floor.